# The Wounded Healer Podcast
## Series 2: On Becoming a Man, Smalley Style
## Episode 4 Full Package
# Episode Title
It's Not Your Fault. But It Is Your Problem.
# Episode Description
I teach something called radical responsibility. It is the thing that separates men who change from men who stay stuck. And it starts with understanding the difference between blame and ownership.
Blame says "this is my fault and I am terrible." Responsibility says "this is mine to own and I am going to handle it."
God told me I was my own worst nightmare. Not because everything was my fault. It was not. The pain was real. The circumstances were genuinely destructive. But I had spent years pointing at everyone else's issues while ignoring the one common denominator in every mess I was in. Me.
My son David, in the middle of Army boot camp, wrote nine words in a letter that sum up everything I teach about responsibility: "No one told me life was going to be fair, so I accept it." He is twenty-four. That sentence is more mature than most men twice his age.
If you are tired of being stuck in the same cycles and secretly suspect that part of the problem might be in the mirror, this episode is going to feel like a relief. Not a punishment. A relief.
Text me at (303) 435-2630 or visit smalleyinstitute.com
# Full Episode Script
*Note to Michael: This is the episode where you bring the heat. Radical responsibility is your signature concept. This is not gentle. It is direct, loving, and uncompromising. The thermostat illustration is the one that is going to get shared man to man. Nail it.*
*Target length: 30 to 35 minutes.*
We are four episodes into this series on manhood. So far we have talked about rejecting passivity, being brutally honest, and knowing that your worth comes from God and not your output. Today is where it gets uncomfortable.
Today we talk about responsibility. And I need to be very precise about what I mean, because this word has been abused by church culture and self-help culture in ways that have done real damage.
There is a version of "take responsibility" that is really just shame wearing a productive mask. Man up. Own it. Stop making excuses. Carry the weight. Be accountable. Sounds great on a poster. In real life, that version of responsibility drives men into the ground because it does not distinguish between what is actually theirs to carry and what is not.
That is not what I teach. What I teach is radical responsibility. And it starts with understanding the difference between two words that most people use interchangeably but should never be confused.
Blame. And ownership.
Blame says: "This is my fault and I am terrible."
Ownership says: "This is mine to handle and I am going to handle it."
Those sound similar. They are not. They produce completely different outcomes.
Blame is backward-looking. It asks "whose fault is this?" and the answer is always shame. Whether you blame yourself or someone else, blame keeps you anchored in the past, in the offense, in the injury. Blame does not build anything. It just assigns punishment.
Ownership is forward-looking. It asks "what can I do about this?" and the answer is always action. Ownership does not care whose fault it is. It cares about what happens next. Ownership builds. Blame burns.
I spent years doing both wrong. First, I blamed everyone else for my problems. My wife, my circumstances, my childhood, the church, the culture. I had a very long list of reasons why my life was a mess and none of them involved a mirror.
Then, when I finally turned the mirror around, I overcorrected. I blamed myself. For everything. I became the villain in my own story. Every problem was my fault. Every failure was evidence that I was fundamentally broken. I went from blaming others to shaming myself, and I called both of those things "responsibility."
Neither one was. Responsibility is something else entirely.
Let me tell you about the moment that changed my understanding of this.
I was complaining to God about her. Again. Listing her issues. Building my case for why my behavior was justified given what I was dealing with. I was mid-sentence in my litany of grievances when the Holy Spirit interrupted me.
"I am not interested in her issues. I am not okay with your own, and I will not lift a finger until you start to address your many problems. Shut up about her or anyone else. You are your own worst nightmare."
Now here is what I need you to understand. God was not saying everything was my fault. He was not dismissing the pain that had been inflicted on me. He was not saying the other person's behavior was acceptable. The pain was real. The circumstances were genuinely destructive. I did not invent the problems in my marriage.
But I was the one sitting in front of God. Not her. Me. And God was saying, very clearly: you are the only person in this room, and you are the only person whose behavior I can work with right now. So stop pointing over there and start looking right here.
That is radical responsibility. Not "everything is your fault." Not "nothing is your fault." Just this: you cannot control what happened to you. You can control what you do with it.
Galatians 6:4-5 puts it this way. "Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else, for each one should carry their own load."
Carry your own load. Not everyone else's load. Not no load at all. Your load.
And Matthew 7, the plank and the speck. "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"
Jesus is not saying the other person does not have a speck. He is saying the plank comes first. Your stuff first. Then you can see clearly enough to help with theirs.
Most men get this backwards. We are experts at diagnosing everyone else's problems. We can see our wife's issues with clinical precision. We can identify our boss's blind spots, our friend's bad habits, our pastor's theological errors. We have twenty-twenty vision for everyone else's planks.
And we cannot see the log sticking out of our own face.
Radical responsibility says: start with the log. Always.
Let me give you an illustration that I think will change how you see this.
There are two kinds of men in any room. Thermometers and thermostats.
A thermometer reacts to the environment. Whatever the temperature is in the room, the thermometer reflects it. If the room is hot, the thermometer reads hot. If the room is cold, it reads cold. The thermometer has no agency. It just reports what is happening around it.
A thermostat sets the temperature. It decides what the room is going to be. If the room is too hot, the thermostat kicks on the air. If it is too cold, it turns on the heat. The thermostat does not react to the environment. It shapes the environment.
Most men are thermometers. Their wife is in a bad mood, so they are in a bad mood. Their boss is stressed, so they are stressed. Their kids are acting out, so they are reactive. The traffic is bad, so their evening is ruined. They spend their entire lives reacting to whatever is happening around them and wondering why they feel so powerless.
A man who takes radical responsibility becomes a thermostat. He does not control everything. He does not pretend the temperature is not real. But he decides what he is going to bring into the room regardless of what the room is doing.
Your wife comes home frustrated. The thermometer reflects her frustration right back. The thermostat says: what does this room need right now? And then provides it.
Your boss is unreasonable. The thermometer complains about it for three hours. The thermostat says: what can I control here? And focuses there.
Your life hands you something painful and unfair. The thermometer says: this should not be happening to me. The thermostat says: this is happening. Now what?
My son David wrote me something from boot camp that I want to read to you. Nine words. "No one told me life was going to be fair, so I accept it."
That is radical responsibility in a single sentence. No complaint. No blame. No self-pity. No pointing at the drill sergeant or the system or the unfairness of it all. Just a clear-eyed acceptance of reality and a decision to keep moving.
David did not learn that from a book. He learned it in the crucible of boot camp, where the option to blame your circumstances is technically available every minute of every day and also completely useless. Nobody cares whose fault it is when you are doing push-ups in the rain at four in the morning. The rain is the rain. The push-ups are the push-ups. You do them or you do not.
That is what radical responsibility looks like stripped of all theory. You cannot control the rain. You can control whether you keep going.
Here is what I want you to do this week. I want you to pick one area of your life where you have been spending energy on blame and redirect that energy toward ownership.
Maybe you have been blaming your wife for the distance in your marriage. Stop. Not because she is blameless. Maybe she is not. But because blame has not produced a single inch of progress and it never will. Ask yourself instead: what is my part in this distance? What can I do, starting today, regardless of what she does?
Maybe you have been blaming your boss, your industry, the economy for your career frustration. Stop. Ask: what is within my control? What action can I take this week that moves me forward?
Maybe you have been blaming your childhood, your parents, your past for the patterns you keep repeating. And listen, your past is real. Your wounds are real. What happened to you matters. But at some point, understanding why you are the way you are has to become deciding who you are going to be. The explanation is not the destination. It is just the map. You still have to walk.
A real man does not waste energy on what he cannot control. He pours everything into what he can.
Next week is about protection. And not the version you are thinking of. Not the "I will beat up anyone who threatens my family" version. The real version. The daily, unsexy, showing-up-consistently version. Protecting your wife's heart by being safe. Protecting your kids by being present. And the one nobody talks about: protecting yourself by setting boundaries.
Because a man who does not protect his own heart has nothing left to offer anyone.
That is Episode 5: "Who Are You Willing to Bleed For?"
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Text me at 303-435-2630. Email me at [email protected].
Visit smalleyinstitute.com.
See you next week.
*End of Episode 4.*
*Show Notes:*
*Text Michael: (303) 435-2630*
*Email: [email protected]*
*Website: smalleyinstitute.com*
*Next episode: "Who Are You Willing to Bleed For?" dropping next week*
*Subscribe and follow wherever you get your podcasts.*
